At the age of 91, Saitama resident Izumi Noguchi is speaking at his first press conference — at least as an actor anyway. “When I saw an advert in April inviting anyone aged 60 or older to audition for a new project called 10,000 Gold Theater, I just felt like ...

He is one of Asia’s foremost theater directors, and Ong Keng Sen looked to be enjoying his latest challenge when we met in Tokyo in March during rehearsals for “Sandaime Richard,” Japanese dramatist Hideki Noda’s iconoclastic adaptation of Shakespeare’s “Richard III.” The Singaporean dramatist ...

The NBA Ballet is set to stage an eclectic bill at Saitama Arts Theater next month, comprising the world premieres of two modern works and 1958’s contemporary-style classic, “Stars and Stripes,” by the so-called “father of American ballet,” Russian-born George Balanchine. Not only do ...

Takahiro Fujita was really looking forward to the new year in 2016. He’d already been honored when dramatist supreme Yukio Ninagawa asked him to write a play for him to direct. Now, they were each set to stage separate versions of “Nina’s Cotton,” that ...

“Good fences make good neighbors” is an often-quoted line from Robert Frost’s poem “Mending Wall” about two farmers united in their effort to rebuild a wall that divides their land. Less well known is the poem’s central query: “Why do good fences make good ...

The great 18th-century French writer and philosopher Voltaire famously said, “Illusion is the first of all pleasures.” His 55-year-old compatriot Philippe Decoufle would probably agree. The celebrated dancer, choreographer, mime artist and theater director burst onto the international stage with his daringly surreal, circus-inspired ...

When Peter Goessner’s wife got a contract to teach at a university in the city of Kitakyushu, Fukuoka Prefecture, and they came to Japan with their 3-year-old daughter in 1993, the Leipzig, East German-born director and actor thought it would just be “a short-term ...

A play featuring a doctor involved in the identification of Minamata disease will open in a Tokyo theater on Friday, marking the 60th anniversary of the official recognition of the mercury-poisoning disease. The main character in “To a Quiet Ocean — Minamata” is modeled ...

Press conferences are usually upbeat affairs, but at the one held to herald Festival/Tokyo — a two-month theater festival that kicks off Oct. 15 — Artistic Director Sachio Ichimura appears looking worried and begins proceedings by bemoaning the event’s financial situation and wondering aloud ...

“When the opportunity came to work at Theatre Cocoon in Tokyo, I was so excited about the great dramatist Yukio Ninagawa being the artistic director there,” the English director Jonathan Munby declared. Of course that was before Ninagawa died, age 80, in May this ...

Japan’s musical dance-theater form known as noh was honed to its sublime simplicity in the 14th century by a father and son named Kan’ami and Zeami, and since then it has changed very little. Performed on a roofed stage with open sides and posts ...

Performing on deserted beaches and in villages, temples, dockland warehouses and urban railyards, few theater companies can have traversed the range of landscapes and settings that have inspired Osaka-based Ishinha. Yet though journeys real and imagined have been key themes in Ishinha’s recent works, ...

To celebrate its 35th anniversary, the internationally renowned Kodo drumming troupe staged three days of performances at Tokyo’s Suntory Hall in mid-August, with a different theme for each show. On the first night, Kodo played together with the New Japan Philharmonic; on the second, ...